Poll: Fantasy Earth 2.0

[Thenomain]

To explain (to those who haven't heard me talk about it before), imagine that all humanity, every man, woman, and child disappeared in an instant, and in that same instant every man, woman, child, and other from the D&D- or Pathfinder-style worlds appears in our place. What time period would be interested to read, see, hear, or play this in?

While I'm mostly interested in "Day Zero" stories about this, it could be some 15 years later when the chaos subsides.

( @Coin : I know what we talked about; I'm still batting it around. )

edit: I cannot stop this poll from being displayed twice. When in doubt, use the top one.

[Saulot]

D20 Modern? I'm mostly for it.

[Bad at Lurking]

As long as I can play Throg the Analytic, the Orc from Accounting, I'm in. =D

[Haven]

Will there be coded TS?

[ZombieGenesis]

I've been itching for something like this since Bright. I'd love to get excited for Shadowrun 5E but I just find that system to be a monster. I've been tempted to check out the new Modern Age RPG by Green Ronin to see how hard it'd be to adapt something like this to. So I voted for Modern but I'd also be okay for something in the "near future" that's kind of Shadowrun lite.

[Haven]

@zombiegenesis Bright By Night!

[Thenomain]

@saulot said in Poll: Fantasy Earth 2.0:

D20 Modern? I'm mostly for it.

Close but not quite. In D20 Modern, the fantasy races have been slipping over for a while and are quasi-hiding side-by-side by us natives.

In my imagining, we natives are gone, and they appear in a flash, all at once.

@Coin called it a soft apocalypse, which is a good summary.

(edit: I love the concept of d20M if played in the low-power, hiding-in-plain-sight manner.)
(edit edit: That was RPG-awakening for me. Now I know what about Changeling I keep getting drawn back to.)

(edit edit edit: But if people would rather a Bright/d20Modern, that is also quite interesting.)

[Ganymede]

Moar deductions?

[Bobotron]

@ganymede

Wasn't the Victoriana RPG this but in 1890s London with a fantastical overlay?

[Thenomain]

@bobotron said in Poll: Fantasy Earth 2.0:

Wasn't the Victoriana RPG this but in 1890s London with a fantastical overlay?

No? Victoriana was (to me) re-imagined Castle Falkenstein. Again: Fantasy alongside natives.

It was, however, ten thousand times better thought-out than Bright.

[Bobotron]

@thenomain

Ahh. I skimmed it at Half Price Books but didn't pick it up.

[Thenomain]

@bobotron

I do like Victoriana. It is a game as much about breaking the social mores of the day as they are dwarves with guns. In the start of the book it pretty much lays it out, saying something like (paraphrased), "All characters are played by people from a more socially enlightened age, and as such the characters are going to do things that brand them as pariahs or outcasts. Roll with it."

I'm a bit burnt-out on Victoran (Steampunk) and Edwardian (late Steampunk/early Dieselpunk).

Does the genre that includes Castle Falkenstein, Victoriana, Bright and Shadowrun have a name? "Urban Fantasy" doesn't feel right; the origins of U.F. more about modern-day ghost stories and faerie-tales, while the previous list is about the Tolkeinized fantasy world existing side-by-side with the evolution of society and known history.

[faraday]

@thenomain Castle Falkenstein is more steampunk-themed fantasy, and Shadowrun is cyberpunk-themed fantasy. I don't really see them as co-existing in the same genre at all.

[Thenomain]

@faraday

Both of them come from similar conceits: Fantasy races exist openly alongside humanity. In the case of SR, it's more recent.

Genres are not one-off things. Things can (and usually do) fall under more than one category. Even the categories are more suggestions than anything.

[WildBaboons]

Is your idea natives are gone, fantasy races are here.. and have no idea about modern day life? Cars, computers, etc all foreign?

[faraday]

@thenomain I'm not saying there are no similarities, I'm saying I don't think the genre has a name because people generally don't recognize them as being similar enough to constitute a "genre" unto itself.

[Thenomain]

@faraday

Then I shall create one.

FANTASY EARTH: Our Earth, but fantasy elements are open.

Now I can check off my "do something today" item.

[Ganymede]

@wildbaboons said in Poll: Fantasy Earth 2.0:

Is your idea natives are gone, fantasy races are here.. and have no idea about modern day life? Cars, computers, etc all foreign?

Like the Shannara series, I think, yes.

[Thenomain]

@wildbaboons said in Poll: Fantasy Earth 2.0:

Is your idea natives are gone, fantasy races are here.. and have no idea about modern day life? Cars, computers, etc all foreign?

Sorry, I missed this with images of incredibly well-makeuped orcs/goblins/whatever.

Yes. They are all foreign.

However I figure Tolkein/D&D people can very quickly get ahold of many things.

• Locks.
• Engines.
• Generators.

It's until modern electronics that things start being difficult for them.

This is the key to the poll. Around WW2, we start heading toward the Age of Electronics. Capacitors, resistors, LEDs, etc. These are things that would be magic for a people who are used to dwarven-level locks and ancient complex traps.

I would find a way to work this out if Noir Fantasy is less interesting than Modern Fantasy but man, working out how to make my vision work and let goblins use radios and computers is not trivial!

That's the way people are leaning right now. S'all good.

[Bad at Lurking]

Goblin shaman that can talk to technology spirits might be a thing. Plus, humans will have left a metric fuckton of documentation laying around. And humanoids/demi-humans are smart. Some of them smarter than humans in most fiction, when it comes to technological crap.